Haunted
by Soulreciever
Summary: The ghosts of the past cling tight to their hearts and yet, for a brief instant, they found happieness together. Slash.
1. Drink

Haunted. 

1. Drink.

T: This fic has been inspired by the beautiful 'Eric's song' by Vienna Teng and I ask you all to listen to it at some point to see why! This is a slight foray from my usual X parings (though they are also mentioned) so for those squiked by the thought of Kamui and Subaru together (even briefly) should turn away now! I do not own the characters or indeed the inspiration for this plot bunny!

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He'd stepped out of his apartment with the intent of buying some groceries and of picking up the prescription of anti-depressants that had been waiting for him at the chemists for a week now.

Yet, as always, he'd only made it as far as the pub that skulked in the shadowed corner at the edge of his street.

The place was noisy and it smelt of a unique combination of stale tobacco and bear that always turned his stomach, annoyances that were easily dismissed once he'd drunk enough.

Sometimes there'd be someone new in the crowd and the regulars would bate them into crossing over to him and violating his personal boundaries.

Most of these individuals got the hint to leave him be fairly quickly, occasionally one would see only his fragile outer shell and, confident that one such as he could be of no real threat, would continue to push their luck.

Usually those who'd continue on would leave with a broken bone or a blooded nose as a future reminder to think before they acted, though there had been one occasion where an 'assailant' had had to be escorted away in an ambulance…

More often than not, however, he'd be left alone with his drink and, the alcohol numbing the pain, he'd take stock of the world about him.

Today, as every other day, he saw little other than beer swilling drunkards who were too emotionally stilted or too wrapped into themselves to have somewhere else to be.

He'd sold his soul to protect those men and this dive…had given over his life so that they could continue to destroy theirs…

He pushed at that and ordered another drink in order that he might better drown out the sound of metal scraping upon metal that was echoing in his mind.

It'd been nine years since the world had been 'saved'…

…nine years since he'd used the Shinken to end things once and for all…

…nine years since his 'victory'.

He'd gone back to the diet building, his hands still stained with blood and he'd been told, in a cold clinical manner, that he was the last…

…that the other Seals were dead.

He'd asked for an explanation and the Princess had given him just that…had told him the terrible truth and then…

He'd woken in hospital a week later, coated in bruises and bandages.

The doctor informed him that he'd been pulled from the wreckage of the Diet building by an unknown gentleman who had not given his name and when he's ask for a description the elderly man had replied,

"There was something odd about his right eye."

There'd been only one logical conclusion to the stranger's identity after that and he'd appreciated the relevance of the other coming back into his life at that moment.

He'd searched the other out and they'd gone down to a bar and talked together of the pain in their lives.

Drunken foolishness had brought him to Subaru's apartment and the lingering traces of his desire of the other had furled them into the same bed.

He'd woken warm and secure in the embrace of the other's arms and for a single moment he'd found the peace he'd so desperately needed since the last terrible battle.

For a year they'd stayed together, clutching to one another in the eye of the impending storm and learning, simply for the presence of the other at their side, to forget the threat of the squall and to live for the instant.

It was a task that had proven more complicated than they had believed it might, the ghosts in their pasts having gripped hard to their hearts.

Sometimes he would find the other glancing out of the apartment window, one hand set against his right eye and the other pressed to his heart and sometimes it would be himself who would become lost, his ears straining to hear the final whispered words of a dying man and his hands recalling the sticky warmth of Fuuma's blood.

Yet it was only when he had asked the other about his eye…about the nature of those final words…that everything had turned truly sour…

When it had became clear that their ghosts would never truly let them go.

He'd pushed the other out of his life after that and for seven years he'd been alone with his memories, the alcohol and the pills his only sure rest bite.

The juke box in the far corner of the bar stutters into life and he listens, as well as he can amid the hubbub, to the gentle melody of the piano and the emotion in the singers voice as she sings, in English, of the comfort of having a trustworthy someone at her side.

He glances towards the corner and is unsurprised to find the other there, the smile on his lips so small that he is tempted to believe it insignificant.

Yet for the other to smile at all had been a rare thing even during their year together and for him to smile without clear cause…

He gestures to the empty chair opposite him, the murmurs this gesture causes pulling another small, yet sincere, smile from the other.

The other orders two drinks from the bar and then comes to claim the offered seat, his eyes lifting a moment to asses him before he remarks,

"You are drunk."

"It's better than the alternative."

"Which is?"

"Using my anti-depressants recreationally." There is a reproach clear in the other's mismatch gaze and, smiling in as a disarming a manner as he can, he enquires, "I'm allowed some way to push the memories away, am I not?"

"Yes but I am not certain that Fuuma…"

"If you wish to keep that arm I'd stop that thought there." He remarks as he gestures to the other's right arm.

"You have changed since the last that we were together."

"And you were the one to change me."

The other shivers at the phrase and, for a moment, he closes in on himself. When the other's posture again relaxes he enquires,

"Why are you here?"

"I missed you."

"Then why wait all this time to see me again?"

"I only discovered you were here last week and it's taken me that long to decide the best course of action."

"Why chose to see me then? It'd only end badly after all."

"Perhaps and yet…it made sense to be together, did it not?"

"Yes."

"Then why not try again?"

"Because of the hurt we have endured and because of the scars we can not quite hide." He remarks as he gestures first to the other's right eye and then to the scar that runs just below his collar bone.

"Scars that did not matter while we were at one another's side."

"Not to begin with, no, but then my jealousy got the better of me and I became possessive…began to demand things of you that you could never give…"

"We do not have to be lovers, Kamui….simply having you at my side was enough to drive the nightmares away."

He knows that he should say no…knows that he should stop this madness before it escalates again into something other than it should be and yet…

…there is a warmth in his stomach that is not caused by the drink and already he feels his melancholy slipping a little.

He knows, in a hazy sort of a manner, that he is smiling when responds, "Then let us try to be friends, shall we, Subaru?" and that he genuinely means both the words and the expression.

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T: Next chapter Tuesday, until then listen to the song and R+R!


	2. Escape

2. Distance.

T: Nothing extra to add in this chapter, warnings are the same and it's not mine!

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It had become, somewhere along the line, a habit of his to take a step back from situations that he was uncertain of. The logic seemed to be that by keeping his distance he could assure that he never became too involved in a situation…could insure that he did not again lose his control over his destiny.

It was a detachment he had clung to as tightly as possible during the last weeks of the war, which had allowed him to watch the unfolding events in a disconnected, clinical, manner.

Yet when the Diet building had collapsed…when he had felt the incense fire of Kamui's life beginning to gutter out…

In that brief moment he'd lost control.

It was only when the doctor had asked his name that he had been able to reassert his authority…to gain, again, the distance that he craved.

He had known that the boy would find him, yet he had believed that he would have time enough to think the matter through, time enough to decide on the best course of action.

It was unfortunate that, by the time the boy did come again into his life, the nightmares had begun to plague his every waking moment and that he had thus been vulnerable enough to agree to accompany the other for a drink.

He had drunk enough that, when Kamui had asked about his current abode, it had seemed logical to show the apartment to the boy rather than to describe it.

After a quick tour of the building they'd sat together in the living room and gorged themselves upon ice-cream.

He'd been very aware of the heat of Kamui's eyes upon him and he'd allowed himself to be pulled in by it…had allowed his control to again slip from him.

He'd woken the next day feverishly hot and feeling naked both externally and internally, yet all it had taken was a glance and a word from the boy to linger a day more.

That extra day had turned into a week and that week had turned into a month, until he'd eventually spent a year in the boy's company.

At the conclusion of that year the boy had asked about his right eye and the final words that had been spoken to him amid the wreckage of the Rainbow Bridge.

No matter how enthralled he had become into the peace that the boy seemed to offer him, he'd had not want to talk of that hurt with the other…

…had had no want to free himself from the exquisite misery contained within those final words.

The fire of the boy's jealousy had been ignited by that silence and suddenly he'd been alone again.

He'd drunk until he'd been sick that night and then, his body coated in sweat and dried vomit, he'd stared up at the night sky and laughed for the shear foolishness of it all.

He'd drunk again the next weekend and the next, his alcoholic intake becoming less and less with each visit.

Eventually he'd stopped drinking all together and the nightmares had returned.

He did not know, however, dream of the bridge and that final soul destroying confession…

Instead he dreamt of a brief year of happiness and the years of torment that had followed…

Dreamt of the pattern repeating and of a pair of violet eyes that had been snuffed of their last spark of life…

He'd become so very desperate to escape that nightmare and the connotations it held that he had, despite the Tree's fervent protests, left the city.

In the relative quite of the countryside he'd found his centre and the emotional distance he had so desperately craved since he'd allowed himself to become furled into Kamui's life.

Again he discovered the cheep thrill of the kill, of acting out the part that had been left to him in trust by the only man he had, and ever would, love.

His soul tainted again with the crimson stain of blood he'd returned to Tokyo purged of the guilt that had driven him away…free of to 'live' his life again.

For seven years he'd grown into the role, had gained himself a name and had perfected the trick of smiling without meaning.

Then Kamui had come again into his life.

He'd stumbled upon the boy while he'd been stalking a target and, before he could stop himself, he'd asked the bartender about the other.

The elder man had turned to him with a spark of mischief in his eye and had opened his mouth to reply when something in his face had caught the other's attention.

He'd shook his head at that and, the spark fizzing out, he'd remarked,

"That one's not for fooling, he's got a darkness buried in him see, one he smothers with the drink and that vents itself in the most terrible manner.

"The lad's and I make a joke of sending the new blood to that one to teach 'em about the dangerous edge to this place…in fact I thought to do the same to you but I can see well that you've no need for the lesson."

"He's tough then?"

"The regulars are still telling the story of the last new blood that kept pressing himself on that boy."

"I see."

It'd come rushing back to him then, the guilt and the clawing desperation to escape…

…to be free the burden of his emotions forever.

He'd finished his drink, paid the bar tender a generous tip for his 'help' and then walked the distance to Ueno.

He shuts himself into the small pocket of tranquil space that the Tree keeps vacant for him and then forces his mind to calm down.

The first tendrils of dawn are breaking when he comes back to himself and, though his alarm will wake him again in just under an hour's time; he decides to go home to get some sleep.

Years of early starts had accustomed his ears to the beep of his old alarm and thus, to insure that he did not over sleep, he had invested in a radio alarm.

He wakes today to the haunting melody of a piano and a songstress whose honest voice was singing, in English, of a pair of individuals who, together, were struggling against the tide of life.

The words tap some hidden core and, subconsciously, he memories both the name of the songstress and the song itself.

He finds yesterday's target and, after a quick assessment of the risks, dispatches the other with the usual precision.

His afternoon thus freed he comes again into the Tree's domain and, taking advantage of the summer sun, he dozes for a little while.

He dreams of the one he loved, of the distance that had been kept always between them and of that terrible moment upon the Rainbow Bridge.

Dreams also of the year that he had spent in Kamui's company and of the peace he had felt at the other's side.

He'd stirred from his sleep determined to break the cycle before Kamui also became inescapably involved...before the Shirou became burdened with the role of Sakurazukamori.

Thus, though he desired still to simply be free the complications of his emotions, he decided to return to the pub on Sunday and to talk to Kamui of beginning their friendship anew…

…of fighting the ghosts of their past together rather than alone.

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T: Am toying with the idea of writing another chapter for this and if I do I'll post it at some point next week…otherwise thank you for taking the time to read this and R+R!


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